


Vengeance In Seven Shots

by Churbooseanon



Series: Guns For Hire [6]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family Drama, Gen, Guns For Hire AU, Mercenaries, Minor Character Death, Violence, mafia, vengeance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 20:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6625699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stories start on Adaptive. Some come to be there. The famed tracker and assassin known as the Hunter earned his title through the trail of bodies left in his wake after losing something dear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance In Seven Shots

The set-up of the whole situation is frightfully cliche. Surely every criminal drama has made liberal use of a set such as this, the grungy abandoned warehouse covered in the colorful and sometimes expletive laden creations of spray paint some deemed art and which was truly little more than vandalism. The only light around filtered down through the broken out panes of glass in otherwise unevenly painted over windows, a shame really when compared to a single bare bulb dangling like the sword of Damocles over a captive and leaving all else in deep shadow. What truly set the scene, though, were the players themselves. They were the true cliches. One a criminal of some note bound to a chair with electrical ties, an eye swollen shut, his lip split, and a pained moan overwhelming his lips. The other an older gentleman with a respectably maintained moustache, blood on his hands that he gradually cleaned off with economical rubs of an already soiled towel, and the fury of a wrathful god pouring from his eyes.

“Please, man, I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just let me go,” the criminal wheezes with formulaic timing and delivery, right down to a bit of blood dripping from his split lip, and it earns the man a right cross that leaves him whimpering.

“Yes, I believe you will be telling me what I desire, though you won’t be going anywhere,” his captor assures him. “I’m afraid you forfeited the right to walk away in a single piece when you pushed that one little button. Or perhaps before that, as you built your little toy.”

“Dude, it was just a job, it’s only ever just a job. Nothing personal about it. Just tell me what you want to know and I’ll tell you!”

There is a sharp plea in his voice, perhaps sharpened by the fact that more than a few teeth were cracked, drawing out his ‘s’ sounds in a way that might be painful. Hard to tell. The man with the moustache has never had broken teeth before. From the way his criminal companion moans he has to think it’s painful, the way he grimaces when his lips pull over damaged enamel. Maybe it catches on skin, tears open new wounds. Perhaps every last word is a private little agony. Which is, of course, no less than he deserves.

“It is a true shame to see a lack of honor among your level of scum, but I suppose once one stoops to the creation of bombs for nasty little men then the very concept of honor is vastly beyond merely ‘foreign.’ To be honest, though, I don’t need to hear so much from you. After all, your employer is so obvious that I’m surprised he wasn’t apprehended by the authorities within heartbeats of your little party favor going off.”

“Then why do you need me? Just… just let me go man, I swear no one has to know we were here!”

That makes him scoff. What would he care if he was caught? No, unlike this particular piece of societal filth, his desire to remain free lasts only so far as a list of seven men. And look here, one of them sits before him, unable to move and not nearly bloody enough.

“Did you even care to ask what the job was for? Inquire as to the purpose of your employer, what in particular was interesting about that specific car?”

He’s almost shocked to hear the man start to chuckle. What can possibly be so funny when his very life may hang in the balance, when the answer can decide so very, very much? Or has he figured it out? Yes, it must be that. Why take the question seriously when the scum’s determined that the gun hanging at his side is meant to function as more than a prop. Not that it’s remotely new or suitable to the job. It’s an heirloom, owned in turn by each man bearing the name of Reginald James Halliday, back seven generations to the original owner who thought the nickel-plating and mother of pearl inlay handle was just dashing. Dashing yes, functional absolutely, and the soon-to-be end of this bomber, absolutely. That doesn’t mean Reginald puts much weight upon the weapon itself.

Guns are tools, just like the man before him.

“You don’t ask, old-man. No one gives a fuck. The money comes, the instructions come, and the job, it’s just done. Just like that. Ask questions and you get offed too. I’m too fucking professional for that shit.”

Reginald has to scoff at that. Really? Professional? “If you were that consummate a professional, then your name never would have been attached to the death so easily. And yet here we are, you tied to a chair and me standing with a gun and bloody knuckles.”

“It’s just some chick, what does it even matter?”

The slime, his name is and soon to be was Jackson. Reginald leans in close to inspect his face, and is pleased to see he’s broken the man of the dreadful habit of spitting. The cretin had done that more than once at the start, and thus the broken teeth. One should know better than to cross a pugilist, but he supposes the man who acts the part of an American, for his accent has the thick and distasteful characteristics of that long since fallen nation, wouldn’t know better. Now he does of course, but he won’t have the chance to transfer the lesson.

“Her name,” Reginald says, voice cold and carefully measured, feigning control he barely possesses, “was Regina Hartfield Halliday. She was merely twenty-two, that was her first car, and she had recently finished with university. Her intention was to travel through the inner-colonies before continuing on to study societal growth and community standards so she could travel out of system to help improve the lot of colonists far from Earth. And I use the tense because you deprived her of all of that with your little surprise!”

The man flinches away as Reginald loses control. Each word lifts in pitch, burns with greater anger, churns with deeper pain. When he ends it’s with a shout and the gun in his hand. Reginald doesn’t know how it got there, but it’s heavy and cool in his hand, a promise of finality. He’s never shot the thing before, well, save for the brief interlude at the range three days prior to test it for functionality. Antiques always have to be checked, and to have the gun misfire in his own grip would be ruinous. After all, this Jackson isn’t the only man on the list. Just the immediate one. Just the one that pulled the trigger and sent Reginald’s world up in a fireball.

“She was my little girl,” he continues, his voice dipping down into the smallest of whispers. “My Gina-Beana. She loved ponies and eating meals off of daisy-print plates and made the most beautiful chalk art. She was going to mean something, instead of being a pathetic excuse of offspring like you.”

There was fear in those blue eyes before, but Reginald almost giggles at the terror there now. Hell hath one fury to match a woman scorned: a grieving father. His life was meant to protect hers, the next generation. Her hair was gold like the sun and her eyes were his gray rather than her mother’s emeralds. Still a little wind chime she made when she was eight hangs on the porch of the estate, lopsided and painted in garish colors and when he closes his eyes he can see it and the pride of her smile when she presented it to him for father’s day.

“Her teeth were always so amazingly perfect you know,” Reginald says, moving to the shadow to pull out the other chair he prepared this place with. “I never even had to consider braces for her. Nothing like my own. Perfect teeth, my little girl. Only two cavities in her life, and both when she was a child. Too much of a sweet tooth and I indulged her too greatly after her mother passed you see. I tell you this because, you see Mister Jackson, they couldn’t even identify her from her teeth. Most of them were blown straight from her head. The examiner didn’t want to tell me of course, they had to use bone marrow to test her against her hairbrush if you’d believe it. But I paid the assistant. They gave me this little file…”

Speaking of, Reginald pulls the damning thing from where he taped it under his chair. Gun still leveled on the sleaze, he opens it with one hand, drawing out picture after picture. He tosses them down into the still circling pool of light. Autopsy photographs didn’t suit his Regina, not by any measure. Yet they are the last images for him, all that will remain in his nightmares. When he looks up he can see the man cringing away from his handiwork a bit. Well, at least this Jackson has the saving grace to not be the sort of vile creature that gets off on his work. Work is work is work. Perhaps that holds true even upon the lowest of the low, or perhaps not.

“Fathers are supposed to protect their children,” Reginald says as he leans back in his chair. “Look at the pictures. Look at what you did to her, what I couldn’t stop!”

“She shouldn’t have crossed Castillon!” the man shouts. “Shit man, she shoulda just kept her mouth shut like a smart little bitch and…”

The gun snaps back with recoil in his hand, once twice, so many times that he can’t count it. Not that he needs to count as the gun clicks and clicks, announcing the lack of any more bullets. His arm stings, his heart aches, and the air smells like gunpowder. Gunpowder and blood, one leaking from the gun, the other pouring from the red mass of what was once a recognizable human face. Not that it is anymore. Jackson is no more likely to be identified by dental records than Regina. His mouth tastes of bile, his stomach threatening to empty itself, but he can’t let that happen. The authorities will already have a good enough reason to suspect him without him being sick over the whole scene.

Slowly Reginald stands on shaking legs, forcing himself to keep his balance. To think it’s never been a trouble before, but he supposes he’s never killed a man in cold blood before either. It isn’t in his nature to harm others, not even hunting. Of course has changed, hasn’t it? The gun is a hot weight against his side as he slides it into his pocket, but it’s lighter than when he came in. He’s lighter than when he came in, but not light enough. So much weight to go.

His fingers brush his datapad in his pocket as the gun settles there. In spite of himself he pulls the datapad forth and plays the too-oft visited file. It’s got to be nearly seventeen years now, if it’s a day, and he knows every bit of it by heart. Still he starts the file as moves through the gloom of the stage he set. Instantly a darling little girl is smiling up at him, laughter in her eyes and sunlight in her hair.

“Daddy, can we play princess and knight again?” the little voice asks.

“Of course my darling,” he answers, echoing words said so many years ago in another lifetime. Two other lifetimes. “Daddy is always going to be your knight. You don’t even have to ask.”

“And you’ll save me from all the bad guys, right? Like wicked witches and bad knights and trolls and ogres and orcs?”

She dances away from the camera without his answer, her blue princess dress spinning around her, sky and sun against a backdrop of bright spring grass.

“Always, my little princess. Daddy will always be there to save you.”

Reginald hates himself for the thoughtless lie told so very, very long ago.


End file.
